Scratching the Itch
by Rallalon
Summary: Her mum had always told her that blokes had only one thing on their minds, but this was taking it to an entirely new level.
1. Chapter 1

"Wait, hold on, no." Rose caught at his sleeve, pulled him back from his attempt to scurry off. "You're not making any sense." First things first. "Why can't we go outside here?"

The Doctor was still moving down the hallway, absently trying to brush her hands off without looking at her. "Bugs. Bugs, Rose, I already explained-"

"No you didn't," Rose interrupted, taking his hand, hard. He still wasn't looking at her and Rose tried to move in front of him. He turned his head away but didn't drop her hand. "You just rambled something and said 'see you in six hours'."

"Oh, right, did I?" he babbled. "Oh yes, I did. See you in six hours then." He tried to pull away again, adding a quick, "The effects should be over by then."

Rose's stomach lurched as she changed her grip to the cloth of his sleeve. "The effects of what?"

No doubt picking up on her tone – he'd have to be deaf not to – the Doctor looked at her. His mouth open for answering, his expression stuck and held, the Time Lord rendered abruptly silent.

His pupils were huge.

"Doctor . . . ?"

A struggle played across his face, raged behind those dilated eyes he'd tried to keep her from seeing. He'd stopped trying to move, to pull away, the lack of motion as unnerving as his earlier retreat. His lips moved soundlessly, the words welling up in his throat and trying to break free.

"Bugs," he managed at last. As the one syllable breached whatever dam was holding him back, so much more broke through. "Bugs outside. A swarm. _Kakothrips cogitatio_, the brainstorm bug, the fixation fly, the one-track tick, the learning leech." He pointed at his neck, pulled down his collar to better show her the angry red welt there. "Mental mosquito bite."

"Itches for six hours?" Rose guessed, one hand reaching out as if to touch. She pulled it back halfway through the motion, not sure what would happen if from contact.

The Doctor bobbed his head. "Latches onto the current thought. No, not latches. Makes you latch. Fixate. One thought. Six hours."

"So, you were thinking about . . . ?" Rose asked, unconsciously leaning forward, watching the play behind dark eyes barely rimmed with brown.

"TARDIS repair."

Rose blinked. "What?"

"TARDIS repair," the Doctor repeated. "Stepped out, thought, bit – not bit, bit_ten_, TARDIS repair. Six hours." His words spilt out in a rush as if he was afraid he wouldn't remember how to finish a complete sentence.

"Oh." Once pieced together, it made almost sense. Almost. "What about your eyes?"

In a confused attempt at an answer, the Doctor pulled out his glasses, held them up. "They're fine."

Side effect, Rose reasoned. "S'not dangerous, is it? Not going to hurt yourself or anything?"

"Um," said the Doctor, a reply that was far less than reassuring.

"Doctor," Rose restated slowly, nodding with each word and tugging on his hand when his attention started to wander. "Is the bite dangerous? Is it going to hurt you?"

"That was very condescending," the Doctor commented dryly.

"No?" Rose asked, wondering. If it had been really bad, he would have really tried to focus, wouldn't he have? So she would have gotten a proper response, yeah? Maybe?

"Yes it was," he argued. "It was distinctly, one-hundred-percent . . ." He trailed off distractedly, scratching absently at the mark on his neck.

By the basic rules of bug bites that she knew, that looked like a bad idea. "Doctor, don't." Rose reached for his arm, pulled his hand down. "No scratching."

"No scratching," he agreed easily, looking at her intently. "Don't you think I know that?"

A sudden impulse made Rose ask, "Know what?"

The Doctor blinked and, for a moment, looked very confused. "Um," he said once again. "It'll come to me."

"Six hours and you're back to normal, yeah? Just six and you're all better," Rose stressed, willing him to say yes, nodding as she spoke to encourage this.

"Yup," he said brightly, popping the "p." He smiled at her, gave her hand a squeeze as he leaned forward. "I feel fine."

"You're not acting like it," she countered, squeezing back, pleading for the coherency to continue.

He looked down at her, his soft expression fitting all too well with his bedroom eyes. "I'm all right," he assured her, cupping her cheek in a way he hadn't done in ages, his hand cool and tender.

"Anything I can do to help?" she offered, unable to believe him for one moment.

Once again, the words stuck in the Doctor's throat, were dammed up in there and unable to get out of his mouth. Speechless was not a state the Doctor was supposed to be in, not ever. In the end, he shook his head, pulling his hand away self-consciously.

"I," he started to say, then stopped. He shook his head again. "No."

"Are you sure?" she asked, trying to stop him from pulling away once more.

"Oh, absolutely," he agreed. "What about?"

Looking up into his face, listening to the complete lack of worry in his voice, Rose opened her mouth only to shut it again.

When he tried to wander off again to tinker with his beloved ship, she let him with no small sense of misgivings. Even if she dragged him to the library, she'd have a hell of a time keeping him in there. She'd be searching for a cure by herself anyway, she told herself. Just in case. One thought for six hours, in a brain the size of the Doctor's, clearly meant his head was going to implode.

She'd solve this on her own, if that's what it took.

.-.-.-.-.-.

One not-so-stray thought that had not-so-strayed from his mind in what was approaching an hour. He'd worked, he'd tinkered, he'd done everything he could think of to distract himself but he was gradually losing the ability to do so. As for convincing lies, there was little chance of forming another. Mustering up the one about the TARDIS had been difficult enough. Far too soon, he'd be left with one thought and one thought alone:

Sex with Rose Tyler.

Fortunately, this was more of an entire topic than a single thought and had yet to get remotely repetitive in its merry little dance around the insides of his cranium. For instance, along with the concerns of how one went about having sex with Rose Tyler, there was an entire list of vastly unpleasant other details to mull over.

Such as the persons who had already had sex with Rose Tyler. And the people Rose Tyler was considering having sex with in the future. If they existed. They might not. Was that good, if they didn't? If "they" included him? He thought about that for a little while, perhaps five minutes worth of lengthy pros and cons which boiled down to one simple point each. Pro: no one else would have sex with Rose Tyler. Con: he would not have sex with Rose Tyler. Conclusion: wonderful and tragic, respectively. Overall . . . he'd have to think about it some more. Not like he didn't have the time.

How many people had Rose had sex with, anyway? The Doctor shuddered at the thought of Mickey, pulled his mind away in horror from the involuntary mental image of two human bodies entwined in Rose's old bedroom. Not thinking about that. Not not not. No. Bad.

Rose couldn't have enjoyed it that much anyway. Not that much. No. Obviously not. Rose would want . . . . What _would_ Rose want? In bed. Or in the shower. Possibly on a table or against the wall. Ooh, a couch. Or a hammock. That would be difficult. Possibly worse than a waterbed. What would that be like, sex with Rose Tyler on a waterbed? Bouncy, but fluid. Molding. Or what if she was on top? If he bucked – if he could buck – would she fall off? No bucking, then.

His mouth slowly went dry, his breath coming out in shallow exhalations through parted lips. He'd been staring at the same bit of circuitry without seeing it for at probably ten minutes, but as he wasn't paying attention to that, he couldn't have said the exact time. Fixated on something else, that was him. Fixated.

Rose Tyler. On top of him. Molding herself around him, hot, tight, wet and only-for-him. Her human-hot hands pressing on his shoulders, fingernails scratching skin. Her hips circling, shimmying, _grinding_ as she suddenly clenched down. Her eyes falling shut, her mouth falling open, her head falling back as a wanting murmur fell from lips too distant to kiss. Her hair spilling over her shoulders, sticking to her face from sweat, urging him to touch. Her breasts bouncing as she rode him, taut peaks begging for his tongue. The strange, rolling slosh of a water-filled mattress rocking him back up under her, into her. Her hooded eyes drawing him in until all he was, all he ever could be was drowning, drowning in her.

The clamor of metal made him blink and look down. Though having dropped it, he didn't think to pick up his sonic screwdriver. The noise identified as something safe to ignore, he safely ignored it, wandering absently away.

His feet took him to Rose's bedroom, his mind already inside, listening vaguely to a conversation about mosquito bite treatment of all things. He could see her there in perfect detail. She'd tossed herself down on the bed to feel it bounce; she'd wriggled around a bit to get comfortable, mussing the duvet as she did; her top had ridden up, exposing a line of skin that would much rather be covered by hands and lips than cloth anyway. And as her hair tumbled over the edge of the bed, she'd taken out her mobile and called home.

The thought of Jackie barged its way unannounced into the Doctor's musings on sex with Rose. The result was not good. Or actually, due to the doubtlessly humiliating reaction he might have otherwise witnessed as Rose realized what was going on in his head, the result was very good. Very good in that it was very preventative.

There would be slapping. And screeches of rage. And she would try to badger Rose into leaving him. So by having sex with Rose, he would . . . stop having sex with Rose.

The Doctor stood there for perhaps too long, puzzling out whatever logic it took to make that sentence make sense. Long enough for the door to open, Rose blinking at him.

"Thought you were gonna be fixing the TARDIS for the next five hours," Rose might have said. Even staring at her mouth as he was, he couldn't have been sure.

"I need help," the Doctor finally admitted.

.-.-.-.-.-.

She'd forgotten the name of the bug almost as soon as the Doctor had said it, too preoccupied with his growing incoherence to memorize it. Her rummaging through the library had turned up next to nothing relevant and absolutely nothing helpful. She'd even been desperate enough to phone her mum and ask for a quick internet search. She wasn't looking forward to explaining why, either. As it was, that mental mosquito bite had a lot to answer for. She had half a mind to get a load of bug spray and go wreck havoc outside. The worst thing that could happen would be her getting _completely_ focused on killing the things. Maybe she'd try her hand at it, after she got this taken care of.

"Am I doing this right?" Rose asked, mostly to get him talking again, concerned at the Doctor's silence. "Too tight?" She glanced up at his face, found him looking at her with eyes somehow both blank and alert at once. "Doctor?"

He blinked, the effort of it screwing up his face. "Yes, Rose," he managed.

"Should I go tighter?" she asked again, carefully articulating.

"Uh," the Doctor said, clearly not following the subject.

In reply, Rose yanked the strap through the buckle hard enough to get his attention. "Restrain you so you don't damage the TARDIS," she reminded him. "S'what you told me t' do."

"Did I?" he asked, no interest at all behind the question, no recollection. She could answer and he wouldn't pay attention.

Fighting the urge to shake him, Rose shivered, unnerved by the distance in his voice and eyes.

"Cold?" Suddenly fascinated, he shifted on the infirmary chair, the one like a dentist's chair except with optional restraints. His unfastened hand reached across to touch her cheek. She'd only gotten the one wrist down, the Doctor willing to sit still but unable to help. "I could-"

Catching his hand, Rose shook her head. "'M not cold and I'm not going to let you loose to play with the thermostat." The way last him had switched moods had nothing on this.

He turned his hand to better hold hers. The motion must have been automatic, something that all the rampant higher brain function couldn't interfere with. An involuntary smile tugged at her lips at the thought. A glance up to his eyes found them bright and focused, something soft in his gaze as he smiled back at her. His pupils were still hugely dilated, but there was a part of Rose more than willing to rationalize that symptom away. For a moment, he was all right. He was better than all right. He was perfect, save for the red mark on the side of his neck, a jarring physical reminder of his condition.

"Did you start scratching it again?" Rose asked, trying to get a closer look, not sure if it was redder than before.

He turned his head to watch her as she moved, hindering her efforts to see. "Scratching what?"

Rose bit her lip, realizing now why he must have been in such a hurry to get away from her before. Seeing him like this, so completely clueless . . . . It was like some fundamental rule of the universe had been broken, the Doctor turning into an idiot.

Instead of answering him, she dropped his hand, unable to hold it and go around the chair to the other side at the same time. The first time she'd seen the arm restraints on the pseudo-dentist chair, she'd been unpleasantly surprised. Having to actually use them, however, was not something she'd thought she'd ever need to do.

Continuing to watch her, the Doctor gave her back his hand the moment she reached for it, surprisingly cooperative again. He was having a better moment right now, Rose was sure. Even looked like he'd be able to hold up his end of a conversation.

He held still for her as she unbuttoned his cuff and pushed the sleeve of his shirt up, fingers brushing what he liked to refer to as the manly hairs on his manly hairy arm. It occurred to her that she'd never seen it before, had never seen him even remotely shirtless. She shook her head to herself, focusing on the task at hand instead of her hormones.

The restraint strap was padded on the inside and she was fairly certain that it would be more comfortable on him than having his shirt grind into his wrists for five hours. Once again, Rose was distantly thankful the Doctor had retained enough sense to take his suit jacket off before hopping up into the chair. Less to deal with, anyway. Even if he always looked distractingly naked when only wearing one layer.

As she pulled the strap out from the simple buckle, the Doctor's free hand rose as if to touch her shoulder or to point at something behind her. Rose caught it quickly and brought it back down. In a stroke of brilliance, she stuck her own hand through the open restraint to take his hand. Contact made, fingers tightened and he smiled at her again.

Like threading a needle, Rose pulled her hand out of the strap and, in the same motion, brought the Doctor's willing hand through it. With her free hand, she pulled the strap back through the buckle and fastened it clumsily, trapping him by the wrist. As gently as she could, she tested to see if the Doctor would be able to pull out, pushing at his arm, shoving at it a bit.

"Rose, what are you doing?"

Rose looked up at his question. His complete sentence about something unrelated to the TARDIS. And that wasn't confusion in his voice; that was bemused condescension, like he thought she was off being an idiot human, a stupid ape, but couldn't fully bring himself to care.

That had been absolutely coherent.

"Hugging you," Rose answered and did. The angle was awkward, Rose having to lean over the chair a bit, her arms around his neck. Her hip bumped against the back of his bound hand. She felt the tension in his shoulders, felt his hand move unsuccessfully as he tried and failed to reciprocate. At least she knew she'd done the job properly.

Pressing the side of his head against hers, the Doctor chuckled, a wonderful sound of both surprise and amusement. "Well, then," he replied, sounding entirely like himself. "By all means, carry on."

Rose giggled with helpless relief into his shoulder, holding to him tightly until she was nearly gasping for air. "Stay," she told him when she was fit for talking once more. "Don't – don't go off like that." She'd barely been able to stand an hour. Five more of that would have been – she didn't want to even think about it. There was that so-called superior Time Lord physiology, breaking down toxins the way he'd always claimed he could.

"Who said anything about going anywhere?" he asked her playfully, the back of his bound hand pressing against her upper thigh as a reminder to let him go.

She drew back at the touch, a surge of heat flooding through her from the cool contact. Alien git, getting himself into this mess, touching her like it didn't matter. She was acutely aware of the blush spreading cross her features, feeling the burn across her cheeks. The way he grinned at her wasn't helping any. And his eyes were _still_ huge, all dark with barely a ring of brown around the edges.

Rose blinked, realizing what that meant. "You didn't metabolize it?" But he was coherent, he was fine, he-

"Metabolize what?" the Doctor asked on automatic, nothing behind those dark eyes to imply even vague interest.

Just like that, he was gone.

Shaking inside, Rose did the only thing that made sense. She slipped her hand into his, threaded their fingers together and held tight. She held with both hands, almost clutched at him.

And just like that, he was back.

Five hours left, Rose thought and looked around for a chair. She could hold his hand for five hours.

.-.-.-.-.-.

It took him a while, but eventually he realized that she wasn't leaving.

Some time after that, it occurred to him that this was a problem.

His brain was practically whirring with the effort it took to stretch the subject, to keep up the connections of logic. Sex with Rose Tyler. Not letting Rose know. Conversation to not let Rose know. Controlling reactions to not let Rose know. Controlling thoughts to control reactions. Not the actual _act_ of Rose Tyler. Sex with Rose Tyler. Repercussions. Bad repercussions. Rose leaving. Jackie slap.

Thoughts tumbled like a house of cards, fell like two bodies onto a waiting bed, impossibly intertwined and entangled, unwilling to pull apart.

"Doctor, my hand isn't part of the TARDIS," Rose said, something hearts-wrenchingly hesitant in her voice.

His fingers stilled on her palm for a moment only before resuming their exploration purposefully. "No, it's not," he agreed, categorizing this as foreplay, using terms to build those connections, to keep those thoughts together.

Sweat slowly gathered on the whorls and mounds and lines, each traced, touched, stroked. Human, sweaty palms, Rose. Good or bad? Flight-or-fight response byproduct. Was she nervous? Upset? Randy?

He should hold her.

The motion was halted before it could fully begin. He looked down, saw at his bound wrists. Looked at Rose and forgot. "I'm sorry," he told her. "I can't seem to . . ." He shrugged helplessly, ineffectually, unable to put his feelings into words. He was now firmly resigned to the fact that sex with Rose Tyler did not simply involve sex with Rose Tyler. It involved making love to Rose Tyler.

"S'okay," Rose told him, holding his hand, putting an end to his study of her palm by pressing it against his. "You're trying."

He'd do more than just try. He'd pull her against him, relish the way they fit together, a match of bodies too flawless for only platonic embraces. He'd taste her, coax her lips to part, lap into her mouth as she sighed into his, her clever fingers working at his tie. He'd dip his hands between them, lower the zipper of her jeans with all the deliberateness of a very, very deliberate man. And she'd smile at him as he did it, half-sultry, half-shy.

"You should go," he told her, almost pleading as he felt an all-too-familiar Rose-related reaction begin to take place. "You- you should. You should really go."

Her grip on his hand tightened. "Not gonna leave you," Rose insisted. "You know, you could talk about whatever bit of the TARDIS still needs fixing. Be less boring."

"Um," said the Doctor, trying, straining to remember why she thought he could talk about that. Oh, right, lying. Repercussion-prevention giving way to more repercussions. Lovely.

. . . She was, wasn't she? Lovely. Very.

"Yeah?" Rose asked, prompting nervously.

Had he said that aloud? He couldn't tell. Had – no, nonononono, he hadn't. He was sure. If he'd started, he wouldn't have run out of adjectives already. Couldn't have started.

Rose stood up from her chair, stood close, stood over him. He wiggled his eyebrows at her before he could think out the reasons why not to instead of only the rationale which made it all right. Just a little hop up and she could sit on his lap. Just sit across his lap, maybe put an arm around his shoulders. Get a little comfortable and lean against him. Maybe squirm just a little. Only a little. Or, ooh, she could straddle him. Sit on his lap and rock, gently at first and then harder. Press against him and bring her mouth to where he could get at it. No, her neck. Nuzzling and nipping, licking and sucking, making up for his inability to touch her any other way. He'd do that. Until she gasped or breathed his name or-

"Doctor?"

His respiratory bypass seemed to have kicked in. He took in a normal breath of air and said what needed to be said.

"You're not helping," he told her, not so much blunt as completely rude. "You're really not helping, Rose." She was going to speak, she was going to do something, she was going to make this utterly impossible; he did what he had to. Unable to pull his hand back, he released hers instead, hoping that would make the point clear. "You're sort of . . . making it harder- _worse_," he corrected, realizing the obvious innuendo as soon as his mouth had opened to say it. He wanted to pull his legs up instead of simply letting them stick out on the long leg-rests of the chair, to do something – anything – in the vain hope that he could stop her from noticing what was going on directly under her nose.

Now there was a mental image he really didn't need at the moment. That, directly under her nose. Which would mean her mouth would be-

Rassilon, no. Stop it. Right now.

Even if it would be absolutely-

"Could you leave me alone? Now?" The words fell out of his mouth just the way he'd wanted them to. Abrupt and rude and very likely to get her to do as he told her to. She'd leave and stay away and he could apologize later – well, sort of apologize, but she would understand what he meant – and then they could continue on without him making a complete mess of things.

One look at her face, and he wanted to curl up and die.

"Fine," Rose said, taking a step backward and very much _away_. "You've got four an' a half hours left to obsess over your _frankly magnificent ship_."

With all the effort he could muster, he kept his mouth shut, stopped himself from calling her back as she stormed off, leaving him trapped in the infirmary, completely alone. Vaguely, he remembered this being part of a plan, a way of stopping the outright molestation of his companion.

It was working depressingly well.

.-.-.-.-.-.

Inwardly fuming and hating it – he wasn't in his right mind, she couldn't blame him, not really – she went back to the library. Picking up where she had left off, Rose quickly realized why she had actually resorted to calling her mum for help. Staring down literally countless rows of shelves, books piled high in semi-translated alien languages, Rose winced at the sheer magnitude of what was in front of her.

This was hopeless.

Rose shook her head out of habit more than anything else. Not hopeless, never hopeless. She just hadn't found a way around it yet. Okay, think. No more running around panicking. Looking up "mental mosquito" in the database – provided she could find the database – still wasn't going to give her an answer. Not the answer she needed, anyway. Loads of answers, but all in books she had to track down and search through if she actually managed to find them.

So, stepping back. Looking at the basics.

What planet were they on? Had the Doctor said?

Unable to remember, Rose trouped out to the console room to stare at the monitor for a bit. The oddly geometric characters of the Doctor's language shone clearly on the display. "How about some subtitles?" she mumbled to the Time Rotor, glancing up at it as if it would actually respond when all she really needed to do was listen.

The TARDIS's hum changed pitch, something sounding slightly apologetic in it. Or maybe worried.

The console was warm against her hand, reassuringly solid beneath her palm. "So am I," Rose admitted, having a small moment of communion with the ship.

An unpleasant thought occurred to Rose. "Did the Doctor tinker with the translation circuits?"

The question was addressed to the ceiling this time. The answering hum wasn't one Rose could understand, which in itself might have meant yes.

Okay, so much for the name of the planet.

After a moment of glaring at the monitor, Rose fetched some bug spray. At least, she was fairly sure it was bug spray.

. . . Would it work on these things? Let her through whatever insect-infested patch of land they were sitting on long enough to find someone and ask a few questions? The Doctor had said there was a swarm out there, hadn't he? Too big for her to fight off?

Or she could simply try to hold a thought and get out there. One thought, one thing for her to focus on. That was simple: save the Doctor.

The TARDIS hummed a warning as Rose approached the doors. Looking up, Rose stopped, a can of the spray in each hand. If that was the only help she was getting right now, she should probably listen to it.

Leaning against the railing, she puzzled this out some more. So she went outside, she sprayed the things, got the name of the planet or better yet, a cure, and then she came back. The things that could go wrong were, just for starters: the spray not working, the spray not lasting long enough, and ending up being bitten by the bugs. If she got her thought wrong, if she couldn't control her mind in that moment of panic . . .

The Doctor would spend the next six hours trapped in the med bay, spend almost two of them wondering where she'd gone, why she'd left him there. And that was only if humans reacted the same way Time Lords did to the bite – unlikely. For all she knew, she could be at her topic-of-choice for days. The Doctor would have to gnaw himself free from the restraints and Rose wasn't sure he could even bend enough to do it.

With a guilty sort of resignation, Rose set the bug spray down, the cans ringing out on the metal of the grating. Now that she'd thought about it, the odds of finding someone in swarm territory who hadn't been bitten weren't high at all.

That left her with no name for either the bug or the planet it was found on. About half a dozen nicknames for the bloody thing, but with all that alliteration, the Doctor had probably just been babbling. Besides, there was a world of difference between a "fixation fly" and a "learning leech," Rose was willing to bet. One flew, first off.

Sitting down heavily in the captain's chair, she sighed, propping her chin up on her hand, her elbow on her knee. Fat lot of good she was. At this rate, he was going to have to go through the full deal, just sitting there like his brain had been taken away from him.

Not gonna happen. She'd just have to work with what she had.

Returning to the library, Rose grabbed a sheet of paper and the closest writing utensil. It looked almost like a pencil, but the bit in the middle was green and smelled a lot like cheese. Feeling a like she was writing with impossibly fine-tipped chalk, she jotted down the depressingly short list of what she knew.

__

Obsession bug, fixation fly

One thought

Six hours for Time Lords

Dilated pupils

Handholding makes it better

Red mark – itchy? one thought Time Lord allergic reaction?

Bit the neck – blood-sucking? physic/telepathic energy eating?

Mulling it over, Rose tapped the cheese pencil on the paper, leaving little dots speckled about the corner of the sheet. Nothing she could do about the first one until she knew the proper name. As for the second one, well, that proved once and for all that the Doctor really didn't think when he was talking.

Wait, no. The Doctor had been able to tell her to restrain him somewhere, to stop him. He'd been able to think of that. There was no possible way that those words could have fallen out of his mouth in a mere ramble. So he'd been able to think of that, even with the one thought deal.

An idea striking her, Rose eyed her list. That was all one thought, in a way. Underline the top line, make it a title, and the rest followed as a continuation of the thought.

The Doctor was thinking of TARDIS repair, yeah? So take that and keep going with it. He realized that he couldn't fix it in the state he was in, and he was able to realize that because it was still about fixing the TARDIS. And because it was a thought about damage to the TARDIS – damage that would require the ever-important repair – he was able to realize that he had to be stopped before that damage occurred.

A smile tugged at her lips and turned into an all-out grin. She knew what to do.

When she returned to the med bay, the Doctor didn't seem to realize he'd been annoyed with her, having forgotten it well within the past twenty minutes. There'd been a complete reversal, such a quick one that it would have unnerved her if she hadn't known him like she did. As it was, it was still jarring.

Of course, she always got that lurching jerk in her stomach when he smiled at her like that, out-of-the-blue. And sometimes when she expected it, too.

"Hello, Rose," the Doctor said brightly, pleased and proud and grinning away at her as if he already knew she'd worked out the solution.

"Hello," she replied automatically, taken aback at his focus. Was it cycling through? Giving him really bad periods and then letting up so he could be like this? Almost with her, but not really there at all.

Giving her a hopeful look, he brought her attention to his hand, wiggling his fingers in a clear prompting for her to take it. Rose laughed a little despite herself, going over to slip her hand into his. Running from aliens, trapped in dungeons, tied to a chair; no matter what happened, the Doctor was always out to hold her hand. Not that she minded.

He must have realized it helped, Rose thought. If he was branching out far enough to do that, maybe it wasn't so bad after all.

Despite that development, one thing remained the same. Although the Doctor was able to look at her intelligently, focus on her and seem to take in what she was saying, he still wasn't up to talking. As the silence stretched between them, it was all Rose could do not to shudder, to clasp his hand as tightly as she could. But this was going to be over soon. It was going to be all right now.

"Doctor," Rose said, purposefully drawing his gaze up from their clasped hands, "if you cure yourself, you can go repair the TARDIS."

He looked at her, not even trying to understand. Just looked at her, his mind somewhere far, far away from her and what she had to say. His thumb rubbed absently over the back of her hand, a vague smile touching his lips.

"D-did you hear me?" Rose asked. "Doctor? Are you listening?"

"Yes, Rose." A dreamy murmur. Not helping her fight the urge to snog him.

"TARDIS repair," she restated for him, putting her other hand over his. If his mind kept him in TARDIS-stroking mode much longer, she wasn't going to be responsible for her own actions. "Lots of stuff to tinker with. Fix this first, and you can go off and play with your sonic screwdriver for the next four hours."

His gaze flickered between her eyes and her mouth, a promising strain evident in his face. He was thinking, making that connection.

"Y'know what?" Rose realized suddenly, latching onto the line of thinking that would solve all of this. "When you were sick from regenerating, the TARDIS wasn't working right. Couldn't translate, yeah? 'Cause she needs you to be all right. So by fixing yourself, you're fixing the TARDIS." She looked into his darkened eyes and searched for any sign of light behind them. "D'you understand? Doctor?"

"Understand what, Rose?" A blank and automatic question.

Her heart froze. ". . . You're not interested." Sitting placidly, he'd paid as much attention to her words as he did to the bindings around his wrists. "You're not interested," she said again, trying to wrap her mind around this.

"Yes I am!" the Doctor immediately protested, squeezing her hand for emphasis.

"Interested in what?" There was the real question, the one she was kicking herself for not checking.

He leaned away from her and came back to her in the same instant, pulling back physically as he returned mentally. "Nothing," he replied quickly, the speed of his retreat alarming. "Nothing you need to know about," he hurriedly added. "Not important. At all."

He was embarrassed. The Doctor was actually embarrassed.

"Doctor, it can't be that bad," Rose assured him, not sure whether she wanted to hit him for lying or just to laugh at the face he was making. No wonder she couldn't get him to focus, throwing the wrong subject at him.

"It can't? Oh good." What would have previously been simply an inane comment was now an ineffective verbal sidestep.

"There's no way what you're thinking about can be more embarrassing than being tied up and babbling," she continued.

For the first time in all the months – years, even – she'd known him, the Doctor turned red. It could be worse, his very body was trying to tell her.

"Hold onto that thought," she told him cheekily, letting go of his hand to pull her chair up closer to him. She sat down and, grinning, leaned forward to interrogate. "What're you thinkin' about?"

"I won't say," he replied, amazingly articulate. His gaze kept straying from hers as if letting her see his dilated eyes would be letting her see into his head.

Rose ran through what she knew of General Doctory Thoughts. "S'not fixing the TARDIS. Or anything to do with the TARDIS, 'cause you wouldn't lie about that." As she spoke, she watched him carefully, part of her ready to stand up and cheer. She had his attention all the way through. Clearly, the threat of revealing what he was thinking of was on-topic enough to fit until the one thought rule. "Not a book or music or somethin', 'cause then you'd be readin' or listen'," she reasoned. With a solution tentatively in sight, this was almost fun. "Not some historical event or amazing place, 'cause then we'd be there already."

"You're very clever," the Doctor said, smiling at her in that way he did when he wanted something.

"Clever and continuing," Rose replied, keeping her hands very determinedly in her lap. His hair had been in the same state of ruffle for close to an hour now and the urge to play with it had returned with his attempt at distraction. Good thing he didn't know how effective it was.

Especially when he pouted like that.

"Tryin' t' think of what you'd need to be restrained for." She tapped the buckle of the strap for emphasis and managed to distract herself. "Are your wrists all right? Still got feeling in your fingertips?"

A remarkable amount of thinking went on behind those newly clear eyes. Or so Rose wanted to think, unsure of what she'd seen in his expression.

The Doctor twisted his hand in the restraint, turned his palm up and wiggled his fingers. "You could check," he suggested, looking hopeful.

How a person could change his mind with only one thought in it was completely beyond her. "If you had a reason for the restraint, you still have a reason for the restraint, even if you can't think of it right now. Not letting you out."

He looked at her as if she'd missed some vastly obvious point.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Rose stared him down and, for once, won. "You're not thinking about . . . I dunno, eating something, are you? This was to stop you from putting yourself into a jam coma or something. Bursting your stomach. Stomachs, sorry." No, that wasn't it.

Now, what was a random, impulsive thought that could occur to the Doctor?

Rose groaned and the Doctor positively twitched. "What d'you want to put in your mouth?" Rose asked. "There's something stupid and probably dangerous you want to lick, yeah?" Judging by his reaction, she was definitely onto something.

She had never seen the Doctor look so embarrassed, or so completely appalled.

"Uh," the Doctor said, and it wasn't for the lack of thinking about it.

"Fine," Rose told him, getting up purposefully, "have it your way."

"_Rose_," he started to protest, but Rose cut him off with a wave of her hand as she moved towards his discarded suit jacket, the article of clothing having been tossed on the counter before the Doctor had sat down.

Looking through the pockets, Rose shook her head. "Whatever you're thinking about, I bet I can link it to finding a cure for your condition. Let me know, and I can help." She'd found his glasses: not what she was looking for.

"Rose, no. Really. I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine. Look at me, fine and tied up. Couldn't be finer." The babble was back, an encouraging sign. "What are you doing?" And that was the best sign so far, possibly because of the slight note of panic in his voice. He was focusing again.

Ah, there it was. Holding her prize behind her back, Rose returned to the Doctor's side, ready to jump the next-to-final hurtle and put this behind both of them. He smiled up at her in a way that said more than words ever could, a smile that both pleaded and threatened slightly, that asked her to be reasonable and called her a stupid little human.

Rose took his hand and put his slightly psychic paper into it, the pad already flipped open.

"Rose, don't!"

She read the four words on the paper, four words written all in capital letters.

Too late, too slow on the uptake, the Doctor dropped it onto the floor.

Silently, Rose shut her mouth, feeling a needy twinge between her legs, hearing her own words of mere moments ago echo in her ears. _"There's something stupid and probably dangerous you want to lick, yeah?"_ Something stupid, that was her. Stupidest thing alive. Numbly, she sat back down, her hands gripping her knees. "Doctor . . . ?"

"I can explain," he said quickly before shaking his head and reversing his position. "No I can't. I really can't. I can't make it sound right. I've been trying, mind you. Not much choice about it."

"So for almost two hours," Rose began slowly, chasing the shreds of her mind down and pulling them back together, "you've been thinking about having sex. With me." Her gaze kept trying to drop and it was only with a determination born of severe awkwardness that kept her from glancing down.

"Well, not the _having_, per se," the Doctor corrected. Despite being unable to find the ceiling suddenly fascinating, he was doing quite the talented impression of it. "More like a broad overview of the general subject."

"How general?" she couldn't help but ask, her cheeks feeling as if they'd caught on fire.

"Increasingly less so, but it is a surprisingly large topic if you think about it for, what, almost two hours?" At her nod, he made a considering sound. "Didn't feel that long."

Not knowing whether to be worried, flattered or . . . something else entirely, Rose settled on an unequal mixture of the three. "Your time sense isn't working?" When the reply failed to come as more than a vague look, Rose pushed on through the mess of her emotions. "Why'd you think about it?" she asked instead, her eyes falling to her hands in her lap, her voice falling soft and quiet. "You opened the door, saw a swarm of mind-altering, airborne ticks and thought 'What does that remind me of-'"

"No," the Doctor interrupted, the word harsh and hard. He shook his head slightly, repeated himself in a gentler tone. "No. That's not- no. No."

"Just a random thought then," she carefully said, offering him this, giving him a chance to blame it on simple misfortune and bad timing.

His eyes meeting hers, the Doctor didn't answer, neither nodded nor shook his head. He merely gazed at her with eyes dark and vulnerable, expression both closed and open at once. His light shirt spoke silently of armor heedlessly discarded and something in her shook to see him so exposed.

Rose took his hand.


	2. Chapter 2

He kissed her.

This was not an intelligent thing to do, nor was it easy. It wasn't even something he'd thought about. Well, he had, but not like that. Not at this moment. There'd been no planning it out at all, simply seeing her within range and going for it.

He'd botched the moment utterly, but he'd remember it forever nonetheless. Her hot little hand warming his. Rose leaning towards him, just enough for him to bend forward and close that final distance. The completely awkward angle his head was at, the strain in his neck. The surprised noise escaping both of them. Him practically whimpering.

Rose giggling.

Sanity slapped into his head at the sound of her girlish amusement. A very rude thing, sanity. Almost as rude as girlish amusement.

He pulled back, but Rose was already sitting down in her restraintless chair by his bedside – chairside, not bedside, why not bedside? Why hadn't he gotten her to tie him to a bed? Far more comfortable. Not to mention conducive. If he'd been on a bed, she wouldn't be sitting there, shaking from laughter.

Which she was. Laughing. At him. At his chances of Sex with Rose Tyler, a subject so dreadfully important to have taken on capital lettering by its own accord.

His empty hand was very, very cold. Closing it into a tense fist around nothing, it occurred to him that Rose was saying something.

". . . so completely unfair. Most unfair thing I've ever heard of." She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, her voice wavering, the occasional giggle still breaking through. "You finally get an attention span and I have to snap you out of it. That's . . . that's really not fair, Doctor."

"No, it's not," he agreed automatically, trying to get her to keep talking to him. "What's not?"

Rose looked at him as if he were small and missing the point entirely. Which was strange, because it was Rose who was the one utterly off-topic here. She played with her hands, picked at the skin between her fingers, paying that small detail more attention than him. "'m trying to help you, okay? Gonna get you back to normal."

"You sound sad," the Doctor realized. That wouldn't do. That wouldn't do at all. If he hadn't been so slow in dropping the slightly psychic paper, then – too late for regrets now. Solving the problem instead, yes, do that instead. It made her laugh, and now it was making her sad. He would rather have had her laughing. But why sad? Was she disappointed? Disappointed in him? A dirty old man, dreaming about robbing the cradle, that was him. Of course she was disappointed in him. Restrained and _still_ coming onto her – oh, so _that's_ what the restrains were for! No molesting Rose Tyler allowed.

Shame he hadn't remembered that.

Right, yes, solving the problem. Making the Sex with Rose Tyler sound less bad. Make it sound like he'd only been . . . considering. Considering the- the- the _technicalities_ of it, yes. The technicalities. He'd been thinking about humans and humany things and humans really liked sex and Rose was human and that was obviously why he'd started thinking about it in the first place.

He opened his mouth to tell her these things, to babble out something that he already knew wouldn't sound believable in the slightest, but Rose stopped him with a simple act, her hand returning to his.

"'m trying to help you, Doctor," Rose said, might have been saying again. "You've gotta let me help." She bit her lip, a fine idea. He'd like to do that too. Or maybe just nibble. Suck on it, run his tongue over that lip. Really taste her. Not settle for barely a sampling as he had the last time.

Watching intently, he studied the way the slight indents from her teeth filled back in as her lips parted, as her mouth fell open. Her unsteady exhale, air escaping from her, atoms and molecules that had been inside of her now foolishly taking their leave.

"Doctor," Rose breathed, sounding flustered and fascinated and exactly the way he wanted her to sound, "you really need to stop doing that."

"Doing what?" he asked, fully prepared to keep on doing whatever made her react to him this way. He'd do it for hours. For four hours, some distant part of him amended.

"That," Rose said, staring at him in a way he could really get used to. "With your mouth."

What had he been doing with his mouth? "Talking?" he guessed. No, he spoke all the time and Rose never told him to stop. Well, not usually. Not unless there was danger or she had a headache. That was a classic human anti-sex excuse, wasn't it? Not up to it due to headache. Stop talking so she wouldn't get a headache, so then . . . . Then? Then what? Then she _would_ be –

Rose shook her head, the small motion flooding him once again with disappointment. Not talking, then. So much for that theory.

"Then what?" he asked, desperately needing to know. So much he needed to know. He wasn't even certain what she tasted like, despite his efforts to the contrary.

"That," Rose said abruptly, her hand almost pulling away from his. "Doing _that_."

He paused immediately, catching himself in the act of licking his lips. Drawing his tongue fully into his mouth, the Doctor considered, keeping a firm grip on her fingers. "Why?"

"'Cause," Rose replied, suddenly shy, saying that and no more, her face flushed. She always looked brilliant like that, all pink and warm and so very alive. He couldn't help stroking the back of her hand with his thumb, feeling delicate bone beneath soft skin. Her chest rose and fell, her breath shuddering out of her. Distantly at first, and then more acutely, it occurred to him that she was looking at him in a very similar way as he was looking at her.

"Rose," he said, hearts hoping, mind straining, "I think we might be on the verge of something vastly important."

She kissed him.

Wait, no, that was getting events out of order. His brain was skipping ahead to the good part, not that he could blame it. She stood up first, no she smiled first. Both at the same time. She'd smiled and stood up, her eyes glancing down, looking to her shoes and that hadn't been right at all, her looking at her feet instead of him. And then she'd stopped, stopped ignoring him for her feet.

There was something behind her eyes, something in them torturously, treacherously close to promise. As she tucked stray strands of hair behind her ear, those eyes glanced down and away once more before returning to his. A third glance downwards, Rose's lips parting as she saw the reaction he couldn't try to conceal.

The Doctor swallowed and Rose touched his face, her fingertips human-hot and blazing against his cheek. She wasn't- she wouldn't- they weren't- this wasn't, couldn't be happening, no it please yes please Rose now yes-

She kissed him, those soft, warm lips pressing against his, at once perfect and entirely too chaste.

He'd thought of ways to do this. Countless, countless ways to do this. How to hold her, stroke her as he did. Light, gliding fingertips up and down her sides, ghosting ever closer to her breasts. Or a firm, possessive grip, pulling her, no, pressing her against him, hands splayed on her back beneath her top. Cupping her face in his hands, holding her still as he delved his tongue into her welcoming mouth. Fingers of one hand threading through her hair, the fingers of the other dipping below the waist of her jeans.

He couldn't. He tried and he couldn't, wrists held down, hands restrained from wandering. And oh, they wanted to wander. A right case of wanderlust, his hands had. One managed, with no small effort, to catch the hem of her top, to tug on it in an impatient reminder to let him loose on her.

Surprised, Rose gasped into his mouth. Well, he said _into his mouth_, but a gasp meant an inhale, not an exhale, so it was more like she gasped _out of his mouth_, but the Doctor was rather more fond of the _into_. The general idea of it, _into_. To climb into Rose's bed. To get into Rose's pants. Into Rose.

Or, in this case, into her mouth. Gasps meant parted lips and that was the best invitation he'd had all day. He tried to take control of the kiss, attempting to do with lips and tongue and the angle of his head what he so desperately wanted to do with his hands. She tasted like, she tasted like _Rose_, like how she'd tasted when he'd licked tree sap off of her cheek last week, except without the tree sap or cosmetics. And wetter. And far more interactive. Rose had a lovely tongue, a clever little thing once coaxed _into_ play.

She had coordination, too, a tantalizing sense of rhythm. Her tongue stroked at his as her hands alternated, holding his head in place and running through his hair. He fought for control, dominance, but it was near to impossible as her hair slipped out from its minor constraint to brush against his face. Involuntarily, his hips rocked upwards into nothing and a whimper built at the back of his throat, kept only barely in check. Rassilon, what had happened to being technically asexual?

Sex with Rose Tyler, the Doctor thought. That was what had happened to it. Would happen to it.

Rose pulled back and that whimper tried to fall out, emerged as a slightly strangled noise of both frustration and desire. Breathing heavily, she reached distractedly behind her for her chair and sat down in a way that left him feeling exceptionally smug. Her face was flushed. Her eyes were dark and shining.

"Something vastly important, you said," she reminded him, looking well and thoroughly kissed. Which she had been. By him. Him!

The Doctor nodded, irrational pride vying with improbable lust as he smiled back. Or maybe leered. He might have been leering a bit. Difficult not to with the taste of her still flooding his mouth. "Tremendously, possibly." He wiggled his fingers at her purposefully.

Rose giggled and took his hand. "Immensely?" she asked, something very, very promising in her voice.

"Oh, astonishingly," he confirmed, wondering how long it would be before Rose realized how wonderful of an idea straddling him would be. Might be a little forward, though, to ask. Too forward? Or rude. Not the best way to go here, being rude. Especially while not ginger. He firmly believed that there would have been much more snogging and straddling going on if he had been ginger.

"So it's very, very important," Rose concluded, watching his face in a way she really ought to do more often.

The Doctor made a noise of agreement in his throat, a pleased hum at her picking up on this so quickly. She was so clever, his Rose. Brilliant, for a human, and quite naturally, too. In addition to his ginger theory, he also firmly believed that Rose simply happened to know how to kiss well. Very well. It was a skill she'd simply happened to stumble upon with no outside instruction, like teaching herself to read or being able to use a toaster. Something like that. Oh, these were very tight pants. Incredibly tight pants. And the belt, oh yes, that had been a bad idea.

Rose watched their hands, watched the slow, stroking play of his fingertips on her skin. It gave him shivers, the way he could change the rhythm of her breathing, change her body's flow without her being aware. She glanced up, found him studying her. Had she ever looked at him like that before? It fit her so well, that look. No first time expression, this. Had he seen it before? Seen it and missed it, never connecting it to Sex with Rose Tyler?

His hearts stumbled over each other.

"Very, very, _very_ important," the Doctor agreed, wanting nothing more than to be able to reach out to her, wanting so much more.

Something terrifyingly close to resignation appeared behind her eyes, something so terrifyingly close that he must have been imagining it when she said, "So very, very, very important that we should all be in our right minds for it, yeah?"

Thinking of a hospital so long ago – and only such a short while ago – with dashed hopes and hearts full of fear for his girl's precious brain, the Doctor nodded. "Yeah."

"You gonna tell me, then, Doctor?" Rose asked, taking his hand in both of hers, wrapping around it with such warmth that he couldn't help but think of other ways her heat could surround his fingers.

"Tell you . . . ?" Tell her what? Some very human uttering, some little sentence that really meant it was time for a nice shag? A declaration? A- a something else? An anything else?

"How to help you," Rose said so simply, so sincerely that the Doctor doubted his own ears. "Just tell me how to help you, an' I will, okay?"

His mouth fell open, his face as red as it had ever been – not that he'd had all that long to test it, but the point still stood. He was blushing. He was well aware that he was blushing. Barely daring to hope, his gaze jumped from Rose to his crotch and back to Rose.

Judging by Rose's matching blush, he really had heard that one wrong.

"That- that's not-" Rose started. "I mean, I-"

"No, I heard wrong, it-"

"It's just- not like this-"

"You mean not in a chair?" he asked, feeling a true pang. He'd thought about that. He'd had plans. Actual, honest-to-goodness _plans_. He _never_ had plans.

Rose lapsed into another giggling fit, this time holding tightly to his hand, smiling up at him like he'd said the most entertaining thing in the world. When it looked as if she might be recovered, one look at his seat set her off again. He wasn't sure, but he had the strong feeling he'd done something right. The Doctor smiled.

It looked like he might get to use those plans after all.

.-.-.-.-.-.

He'd been hiding it from her before. He'd really been trying. He'd lied, he'd sent her away, he'd babbled.

And now he'd stopped.

Her giggles having exhausted themselves, Rose was having difficulty meeting the Doctor's gaze. Bedroom eyes, she'd thought before. No amount of telling herself that it still could have been a side effect would make it easier to look up, to . . .

His confusion and subsequent smile had both faded, leaving only an intent expression, a wanting look that she could practically feel on her skin. Heat curled low in her stomach, wound itself tightly and begged to be stroked.

"Rose," the Doctor prompted, the careful overtone in his voice at odds with the desire in his eyes. Any other bloke, she would have said he was-

Who was she kidding? He was. Oh god, he was.

She had a horny Time Lord on her hands. The Doctor, lusting. Not just lusting, but practically consumed by it, helpless and irrational and whimpering.

He'd whimpered.

. . . Maybe she could take a quick break from all this and snog him for a bit. Just until he made that sound again. Just to check. She hadn't been listening for it at the time, not really. Maybe-

No. Four hours left, tops. She could hold out for four hours. Ten minutes ago, she'd been willing to hold out forever.

Of course, ten minutes ago, he hadn't been staring at her like that.

"Rose?" he prompted again, something almost obnoxiously smug in his expression. She wanted to wipe that look off of his face, make him gape at her again with his mouth open and features slack.

She squeezed his hand instead. "Yeah?" Rose replied, realizing that whatever was prompting him to coherency was either incredibly important or directly related to something she would also like to consider incredibly important.

"What _did_ you mean?" he asked, the question twisting into the most suggestive thing she had ever heard him say. He was doing it on purpose, she knew. He was, he actually was, but Rose felt almost as if she were in a state of shock. His former mindlessness had been terrifying. His current arousal was impossible, blatantly present but still infuriatingly impossible. Had it been something in the bite? Not just a fixation fly, but a love bug? He couldn't have gotten into this state only by thinking about her. Not the Doctor.

"I meant about trying to cure your bug bite," Rose explained, defaulting back to a slow and clear tone, words carefully enunciated. "And then you can explain whatever really's going on in your head."

The Doctor studied her with care, a look that would have set her burning and given her chills in even a normal situation. He seemed to be trying to understand, attempting to stretch his understanding out that far, to see her rationale and connect that with- with his topic of choice.

Puzzling this out as if it were a necessary piece of getting the sequence of events correct, he asked in a bizarrely intellectual manner, as if only for clarification: "And then you'll straddle me?"

Her mum had always told her that blokes had only one thing on their minds, but this was taking it to an entirely new level.

"Um," Rose said, face burning, mouth dry, biting back the immediate affirmative that came to mind. "Maybe?" she hedged, already imagining how awkward any promise on her part would make it if he backpedaled when this was all over. Though if he did that, he'd better be prepared to regenerate. "If- if you still want."

He beamed at her unabashedly, boyish glee mixing with the darkness of his eyes. Rose had a sudden image of what he could have looked like as a teenager, as an eager virgin about to lose that title on his parents' couch.

Really, with that sort of a picture in her head, she couldn't be blamed for reaching out, burying her free hand in his hair and ruffling it a bit. It was thick and soft and oddly strong in a way that had nothing to do with being stiff or wiry. Alien hair.

His eyes falling halfway shut, he hummed in satisfaction. She'd heard that hum countless of times and she knew she'd hear it countless times more, but never before had she heard it quite like this, never connected it to parted, perfect lips or the hazy look in hooded eyes. And maybe he was leaning back into her touch or maybe he was consciously turning his face upwards for a kiss; whichever was true, it was a movement, a tiny, thrilling movement that drew her in utterly.

In that moment, he could have asked her for anything and she would have given it to him.

She had to hope he'd do the same for her. "Doctor," she started to say, rubbing at his scalp with her fingertips and earning a few more of those hums, "tell me about the thing that bit you." She slowed her ministrations, slowed to a stop when he failed to reply.

Accordingly, that got his attention. "What?" he asked, sounding completely dazed and doing wonders for her ego.

"The bug that bit you," Rose reminded him, circling a finger around the bite mark, not wanting to touch it directly and cause a restrained man to get very, very itchy.

"Mmhm?"

Hearing him fading again, Rose pulled her hand back, only one hand back. The moment she began to pull away, his grip on her other hand tightened. Just a little. Just enough.

Rose swallowed and tried not to fall into his eyes.

"You were bitten," she restated, trying to keep her words from jumbling into each other. "And now you're thinking about- what you're thinking about. How do we get you to be able to think about other things?"

His answering look wasn't so much blank as simply directed at her chest.

"Doctor!"

He looked up, blinking, that line of thought gone already. "Yes, Rose?"

Rose rubbed at her forehead and sighed out a small piece of her frustration. "The bug, Doctor. The fixation fly thing. Tell me about it." She'd known it wouldn't work before she had even said it, but the incomprehension in his eyes unnerved her nonetheless.

"I'm looking at this the wrong way," Rose realized, deciding to voice all thoughts aloud. If she watched his reaction, she could see what interested him and what didn't. Maybe she could go from there. "I'm starting from the wrong end," she mused, then blushed furiously as the Doctor's eyebrows shot up.

Suddenly, _everything_ was an innuendo.

"I _meant_, I can't work backwards from the finish line," she corrected, the Doctor snickering as she did. She needed to fit what she wanted into his mental state, because his mental state was definitely not cooperating any other way.

Rose bit her lip, the idea occurring to her as the Doctor continued to play with her hand and tried to catch her eye. Her heart was hammering and she thought she might die of embarrassment for simply thinking about this. Gently, she removed her hand from his.

He stared at her in hurt protest, but fell silent as she put her finger to his lips.

Set it up. Lay the foundation. "Just gimme a mo'," she told him, barely believing how steady her voice was. "I've got a game for you."

His eyes widened. He nodded gently, only slightly, not enough to dislodge her finger. For a moment, Rose wasn't sure whether his tongue was going to stay in his mouth.

Of course it didn't.

Rose pulled her hand back, shook the licked finger at him. "Behave," she ordered as sternly as she could manage.

He grinned.

Feeling his gaze on her every step of the way, she went to the counter to reclaim the Doctor's glasses from his discarded suit jacket. Her back safely turned, she took a moment to try to steady her nerves, to replay the plan in her head. Okay. Okay, she could do this.

When she turned around, she had never seen him more impatient, more over-eager. It made her want to take very, very small steps back to him. Knowing that she would soon be torturing him enough, she forced back that impulse.

"Y'know, Doctor," Rose began, unfolding his glasses in a manner that was meant to be deliberate instead of nervous. "This you-" She swallowed, dared to look him in the eyes. Which was a bad idea. She licked her very dry lips and he watched intently. "This you always sorta made me think of a teacher. Not a specific one, just . . . just a sexy biology teacher," she finished. "So I was thinking . . ."

She held up the glasses, slipped them onto his face very carefully and still managed to nearly miss an ear. He held still, watching her through the frames, waiting. She moved one hand to his cheek to stop a waylaying kiss and leaned in.

"Talk to me," she whispered into his ear, hearing her heart pounding in hers.

"Like a sexy biology teacher." His voice was a deep murmur, the Doctor having caught onto this exceedingly quickly.

"Like a sexy biology teacher," Rose agreed, keeping up the pressure on his cheek as he tried to move his head. Leaning over him like this, being so close and knowing he wanted her closer, her self-control was waning as it was. If he started trying to touch her, that control would snap completely.

He chuckled into her ear, his breath tickling the side of her face. "I seem to have misplaced my lesson plan, Miss Tyler. Would you care to tell the class what the agenda for today is?"

"Well, Mr. Smith," Rose replied, telling herself she was only staying this close as to not have to look at his face, "you might have mentioned something about the fixation fly."

"Not for use in _this_ classroom, Miss Tyler." For an instant, Rose was absolutely certain he was about to call her a bad girl and then suggest something filthy.

She placed the hand not on his cheek onto his opposite shoulder, pressed down. Steadying herself. "What d'you mean, 'for use'?" This was the test, the stretch. Sooner than she had expected, too. But he had to be able to keep up, didn't he? Foreplay with Rose Tyler. He could focus on that.

"The _kakothrips cogitatio,_ also known the fixation fly, is bred – well, originally bred, now genetically enhanced – for the use of its bite. Usually by desperate university students," he added, that last adjective twisting on his tongue.

"Why's that?" People doing this to themselves, it didn't make any sense.

"Some students, Miss Tyler," the Doctor told her, voice low, "have much more difficulty than you in focusing on their lessons." He did the unexpected, turned his head away, twisted his neck to drop a kiss, two, three, on the back of her hand on his shoulder.

"And some teachers," she tried to joke, fighting the urge to simply untie him and set the responsibility of his actions on his shoulders. Four hours of kissing and nuzzling, of touching and tasting, of sex and cuddling . . .

It was only the thought of hour five that stayed her hand.

They were never going to talk about this again, were they?

Rose shook herself mentally, rallied her thoughts. "You mean people raise these things so students can study better?"

"I prefer a more hands-on approach to learning, myself . . ." She didn't need to see his face to imagine his suggestive look.

A helpless giggle escaped her and she could practically hear him smirking over it. She'd had no idea his mind could get so determinedly dirty. "But that's the main use of 'em, yeah?"

"Mmhm," the Doctor agreed, stretching out the sound, his mouth back at her ear. "They're especially bred for it, enhanced to provoke obsession. The fly finds a pulse point and bites. Nips." He demonstrated on her earlobe, pulled it between his teeth for a quick suck.

Startled, Rose pushed at his cheek, held him at bay. "S'not time for recess yet," she managed, trying for stern and coming out breathy instead. "Keep talkin'." Not letting him start. Not. Not not not. She'd hate herself forever, but he'd thank her for stopping him later.

"Well," he said, sounding so temptingly disappointed at his stopped progress, "after the bite, it sucks the blood out and injects a little chemical concoction to better the process. Hearts pump and the blood carries it up to the brain. The chemical toys with the synapses, sets up whatever pattern it encounters as the best one. And it holds, stays like that for hours and hours and hours, running through that path again and again and again . . ."

"H-how many hours?" Her voice shook for a multitude of reasons.

"Dosage dependant," he replied, an annoyed edge to his tone at being interrupted just as he was really getting started. "Varies with the species, too."

"The students who get bitten on purpose. What happens when they want to finish?" Rose asked, finally getting to the important part, trying and nearly failing on paying attention to the information and not the way it was delivered. "If they're done studying before the bite runs out? And what about after it does?"

"Hm?" He sounded distracted, so she squeezed his shoulder, trying to pull him back on topic. This was getting to be a bit of a stretch for him, she could tell.

"Mr. Smith, can you teach me about what happens after? Post-bite side effects?" she asked, playing with the cloth of his shirt.

She had his attention instantly. "The mind gets a little tired," he answered "Over-exerted, you might say. They definitely feel it in the morning. It varies, of course. Dosage, thought, species, body size . . ."

It felt as if her stomach had been instantly filled with lead. "They get tired of the thought, you mean," she summarized, voice flat. "Don't want to think about it anymore, maybe not ever."

"Not without a good amount of positive feedback," he agreed, a blatant hint.

"An' what if they don't- What if that doesn't happen?" she asked, already knowing the answer and dreading it.

His reply wasn't a serious one. "Then they fail their exams and don't get to go on any field trips." There was no question in his voice as to where the destination of the field trip would be. "I do hope you're paying attention, Miss Tyler. Of course, if you need help – personal assistance, as it were – you could always stay after class. I'm sure I could give you a very thorough review of the material." He played with the words, turned them over in his mouth, shaped them so deliberately with his tongue.

She'd invited him to seduce her. Of all the stupid things she could have done, she'd invited him to seduce her. This was exactly what she'd asked him to do. She just hadn't thought he'd do it so _well_.

Rose couldn't remember exactly when she'd pressed her cheek to his, when the hand on his shoulder had become an arm around his neck. Her back was starting to hurt from the leaning, her right leg shaking from having most of her weight on it. She shifted, the movement reminding her of the growing ache between her legs.

"Though," the Doctor added as she adjusted her stance, "we seem to be out of desks. You'll have to sit on my lap, I'm afraid."

Rose nearly fell over.

As she pulled in one shuddering breath after another, her fingers tightened in the cloth of his shirt. He took advantage of her lapse in coherency, cool lips pressed to her neck, licking and sucking. In a vain attempt for control, Rose tried to think of all the places she knew that tongue had been. Which included the inside of her mouth.

"You're forgetting ah- ahhh – _about_ today's assignment, Mr. Smith," she reminded him. She had to move away from him. She was putting herself in range and it wasn't as if he could reach for her. Eye contact could not be half so distracting as this. Moving away was just . . . difficult.

"Am I?" he mused, looking infinitely put out as she dragged her chair closer and sat on it instead of him. _"And then you'll straddle me?"_ he'd asked before.

The Doctor wanted to bottom, Rose thought with a mix of disbelief, awe and outright lust. He really wanted to bottom. "Um, yeah. Yeah, you are," she replied, fighting to keep her gaze on his face. She swallowed before clarifying, "We've got a project- a lab. A lab project." Maybe she should just talk to his chest instead. See how he liked it.

When she dared to look to his expression, he smirked at her, clearly finding enough innuendo in that statement to keep him busy for a little while.

Rose interrupted before he could start. "Treatment for the, uh, the _kako-_ _kakothrips _– the bite of the fixation fly, yeah? Is there one?"

The Doctor shrugged, the corners of his mouth turned up just enough to let her know he was feigning ignorance, trying to stretch the so-called game out.

Rose glared at him, aroused and irritated and not finding this at all fair. "You're not being a very good teacher, Mr. Smith." She kept up the glare until his certainty faded, waiting until he capitulated first. "And to think," she added pointedly, "I was considering taking night classes."

"Um, right, yes," he said, suddenly the slightly flustered alien she knew how to handle. "_Kakothrips cogitatio_ treatment, right."


	3. Chapter 3

He couldn't fully understand what she was doing all the way over there. The entire point of foreplay, as it seemed to him, was that it came before the main event. Meaning that the main event followed the foreplay.

The last time he'd checked, the main event had not consisted of telling Rose where assorted medications were and how to give him a needle. Oh yes, he'd had great fun talking about_ penetration_ and _injection_, but that wasn't what he'd meant. He'd meant the other kind.

And he wasn't supposed to have been on the receiving end of it either way.

Though the part where she'd rubbed the antihistamine gel on his neck had been nice. He'd gotten a bit of a snog out of the deal, at least. She made wonderful noises, his Rose. Startled, but quickly enthused.

He tried to scratch his neck and failed. After some slight improvisation, he'd managed to mostly rub his ear against his shoulder. Not helping. Nearly dislodged his glasses, actually. Attempting to get them back on all the way, he shook his head about a bit, hoping that would solve at least one problem.

He was a pile of discomfort. He couldn't scratch, he couldn't have Rose, and he couldn't move enough to take care of either issue himself. He shifted as best he could, trying to relieve pressure.

"How long have I been sitting here?" he asked, giving only a token attempt at seeming as if he only had a sore bottom from sitting still too long. Which he did.

Sitting on the counter, frustratingly out of his admittedly small reach, Rose checked her watch. "About . . . Almost an hour and a half."

He groaned, dropping his head back against the headrest. Not very restful, though. "Three and a half more hours," he said, resigned.

Rose leaned forward, hopped off of the counter. "Until what?" she asked, as if this were somehow a question with a less-than-obvious answer.

"Until you untie me?" he prompted. "You didn't forget, did you? It's very important, Rose, that you don't forget to untie me. Not fundamentally important to the universe as a whole, per se, but to me, yes, very important."

"Right," Rose answered, considering him in a way that made him feel a touch self-conscious. More than a touch, actually. Great, towering amounts of self-conscious. Not a natural state for any Time Lord, that.

"I'm asexual," he said bluntly.

Rose blinked. "What?"

"_Technically_ asexual," he amended. "Because I'm a Time Lord, you see." He was confusing her or upsetting her – possibly both, by her expression – but it really was bothering him. "We don't- we didn't reproduce that way. I don't think it's actually possible any longer. Not since – since a long, long time ago," he summarized, not wanting to explain the intricacies of Gallifreyan history as his body rebelled very thoroughly against the technicalities of being asexual.

There was something resigned in Rose's eyes, which was strange. The last thing he would have expected from her, actually. Rose was interested in everything. Almost everything. And she wouldn't be bracing herself that strongly if she only thought a simple lecture on Time Lord physiology was ahead. "What're you trying to say?"

"I shouldn't have a libido," he answered simply.

"So the bite was making you fixated and-" Rose looked very determinedly at his face "-and all that, too? That's all?"

There it was. His handy eraser to wipe away everything he'd said and done since being bitten. His way out. His escape route. His "never have to talk about this ever again" pass, his "keep things as they are" pass.

His "never touch Rose again" pass.

"What?" he asked, purposefully looking at her as if she wasn't making any sense. "No. What I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted was- What was it? Ah, right. I shouldn't have a libido. Except I do," he babbled, running at the mouth a little too much as said libido continued to make itself noticeable. "Third incarnation to have one."

The play of emotion on Rose's face was torturous, the play of doubt and confusion and – could that be hope? "Third . . . ?"

"Body," he clarified. "Thirty percent of the time, I have a libido. Well, that's not quite right. It's not like I regenerate on an evenly spaced schedule. Be a little awkward, that. Time runs out and whoop! There I go, mid-sentence. Like I said, awkward. And off-topic. And not so much a 'whoop' as . . ." He trailed off, puzzling over it. "I don't think there's actually a sound effect for it. Definitely not a 'foom'. Makes a bit of a cracking noise, but that's probably just the little bones in my ears reforming. Not the best noise for a sound effect, anyway. Normally entertaining things, sound effects. When used in conversation, that is. Not so much in horror movies. Though it does sound a bit horror movie-ish, regeneration. From the inside, at least. I don't actually know what it looks like from the outside, can you image? Generally considered rude, regenerating in public. Not to mention problematic."

The words spilled together and sped up as Rose approached him. Her fingertips brushed against his arm and suddenly nothing he could say would fit the teeth. Her hair spilled down over her face as she struggled with the clasp of the bindings, preventing him from seeing her full expression.

"Rose? Rose, three and a half hours left. It's not- Rose, _don't_-"

Ignoring him, she pulled the strap fully out of the buckle, freeing his arm. With that done, she leaned across the chair to work on the other one, bending over him in an idiotically defenseless position. Her hips by his freed hand, her chest almost but not quite on a good viewing level, it was astonishingly defenseless. If he wanted to, he could have . . .

He wanted to. Yet he wasn't.

"Oh," the Doctor said, sitting very, very still.

"Oh," Rose mimicked, freeing him completely. "Sounds like you're okay now."

"How . . . ?" he started to ask, only to begin thinking about it. "Ah."

"Ah," Rose agreed, straightening, standing next to him with no fear of sudden molestation.

She was parroting, he realized. This did not bode well.

"Very clever," he told her in the hope that a compliment would make it better. Probably not, but he doubted it would hurt. He took off his glasses, grunting a little from the stiffness in his arms. He was never going to be able to wear these again without feeling like a dirty old man. Instead of dwelling on that, he hung his glasses on his shirt pocket and pushed one sleeve back up to see the small needle mark. "And not bad, for your first time." There he was again, running at the mouth with innuendo. This could become a bad habit.

"I wasn't sure-" Rose started, face red.

"You did well," he interrupted. "I'm- I'm sorry I-"

"S'okay," she hurried to say.

"If you're sure-"

"Yeah," Rose agreed nervously.

He blinked up at her. "Yeah?" She seemed to- He was fairly sure she- Really, it would suggest-

She nodded, a quick and repeated bob of the head. "Yeah."

"Oh," he said, something tightly wound inside of him coming undone, spiraling out to finally, finally relax.

"Oh?" She looked as uncertain as he felt.

"Yes," he answered.

"I thought, y'know, 'cause-"

He shook his head. "No."

She watched him as if he could pull the rug out from under her at any moment, hope and doubt vying in those dark eyes. "Yeah?" she asked, tentative.

"Yeah," he agreed, meaning it.

Rose stood, he sat, and they nodded at each other for a little while, neither of them able to muster up a complete sentence. In the end, it was Rose who offered him her hand. He took it, swung his legs off of the chair. He was a bit stiff and she was a little more helpful in the whole standing up process than he needed her to be.

Need and want were very different things, he knew, but looking at her, he wasn't sure which one applied.

"C'mere," he might have said or he might have simply held his arms out or Rose might have stumbled into him when he tugged on her hand in an attempt for balance. Whichever the case was, he found himself with a loose armful of human. He wanted to crush her to him, to pull her against him. He refrained, relishing instead in his freshly reclaimed ability to reach and touch and hold, hold at a careful distance.

Her fingers twining in his hair, Rose took that remaining distance between them and made it vanish. Her cheek resting on his shoulder, her breasts moved against his chest as she breathed. Her leg brushed his tentatively, as if she knew he might jerk away, the reaction so deeply ingrained as to practically be instinct.

She leaned into him, pressed against him.

"Rose," he breathed, saying her name into her hair, one hand drifting to the small of her back, the other between her shoulder blades. Both hands held her to him, kept her from moving away. He couldn't keep her forever, he knew. But he could keep her for a little while. Just a little. And if only for that little while, he could call her his.

"Yeah?" she asked softly, turning her face upwards, her lips brushing his throat.

"I'm not human," he reminded her, stroked her back when he felt her tense, traced her spine through her top with light fingertips until she sighed into him.

"I know," she told him. "S'okay." A thought seemed to strike her, tension returning to her body. "Isn't it?" She almost pulled back, but he would have none of that. She was perfectly fine there, against him.

He puzzled over word choice, let the sentence form slowly and poorly. It was difficult, trying to explain and trying not to simply rush to the good part and muck up their first time by having it on the very uncomfortable floor. "We don't entirely . . . . Not naturally built for . . . . We won't . . . ."

"Fit?" Rose volunteered, her voice small against his neck, and he knew he was doing this wrong.

"Um," he said, stretching it out before concluding with a "Hm." In the end, his mouth did what it wanted to do. He pressed his lips to her hair and breathed her in, wondering on one level why humans would try to put that many fruit smells into one shampoo. "We wouldn't not fit, as such," he told her and wondered when exactly that had begun to apply to more than sex. "Which isn't to say that we would fit either, you understand."

She didn't seem to, which was in itself an indicator of their non-fittingness. "And that's not a mixed signal," she remarked and he had a strong feeling that sarcasm did not figure heavily into the human sex act.

His hips rocked into her in disagreement and it was possibly the best argument he'd had in centuries. Even if he wasn't exactly in control of it. To be fair, they had gasped in unison. He took that as a good sign. "Not very mixed, I thought."

Her finger touched the bandage patch she'd placed over the fly bite. "You sure you're thinking?" she asked him, but he could hear the giggle about to break through her voice.

"Very sure," he assured her, fighting down the urge to pick her up and simply have this conversation while in transit to the closest bedroom. Having to force himself, he eased her back, keeping a firm grip on her nonetheless. Confidence was supposed to be good, wasn't it? Attractive? Manly? That was definitely a confident grip, not a nervous cling.

She looked up at him and he thought, he was nearly sure, he was almost entirely sure he knew what was in her eyes.

"Rose," he asked, "may I not fit with you?"

She opened her mouth to reply before biting her lip, seeming to puzzle it over. No, not seeming. She was puzzling- She- She needed to think about it. And now she was giggling, giggling at him!

Sort of giggling into him, actually. Which might have been pleasant in any other circumstance. "Rose?"

"If I say 'yes,' am I saying 'no'?" Rose asked him.

Three incarnations with a libido and he'd never before managed to frustrate himself through bad grammar. This was setting new records.

The Doctor grinned anyway. "If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed that there is no wrong way to answer that question."

Rose grinned back at him. "Really?"

"Yeah," he lied, willing to make it up as he went along so long as it continued in this fashion.

"Clever," she complimented, obviously having caught on to his grand plan. She often did, his Rose.

He could live with that. For as long as he could, he would live with that. "I'd thought so. Absolutely no way to fail this course, Miss Tyler."

It turned out that the _best_ answer to the question came in the form of a very thorough snog. As always, Rose passed with flying colors.

.-.-.-.-.-.

Her shoulder hit the doorframe and they staggered together, their foreheads coming close to bashing together. Rose laughed breathlessly, leaning into him before he pressed her against the wall, his fingers tracing lightly over her upper arm where the accidental contact was made. "We'll get better at this," she assured him, the words turning into a sigh as his mouth returned to her neck. She wasn't certain which was best: the ability to say that, to know they would, or the simple act of burying her hands in his hair to hold him right _there_. "Lots of people can't walk and snog at the same time," she tried to say, not quite managing it.

"_I_ can." The boast was uttered against skin with teasing lips, punctuated with a nip.

"Yeah?" Rose breathed, voice husky. "Prove it."

He chuckled, the sound coming from so deep in his throat as to practically be a growl. He pulled her to him, the challenge evidently enough to distract him from his wall-related plans.

Rose was beginning to realize that the Doctor had done a lot of planning in the last two and a half hours. Very, very good planning. Such nice planning that she'd have to make sure he kept on with that planning. And putting said plans into action.

Bumping together, fumbling, nearly tripping over something she'd left on her floor, they managed to catch themselves before they could tumble onto the bed. They paused before that next plunge, Rose closing her eyes at the brilliant strangeness of it, of the occurring impossibility. He wanted her. He'd chosen her. Her, her, he wanted _her_. That daft, confusing, alien git.

She felt like she could be giddy for hours, but right now, she had something more important to do.

Or undo. Having tossed his tie over his shoulder, her fingers worked at the buttons of his shirt, fisted in the fabric as his hand slipped into her back pocket, a very nice place for it, especially when he squeezed. She squeaked; he chuckled. Nipping at his bottom lip in semi-silent retaliation, she trailed her hands down his chest, tantalizing hints of his wiry musculature evident through his rumpled shirt. Dark eyes watched her face, bedroom eyes finally in a bedroom.

Her hands fisted in his shirt, she pulled the cloth up slowly, pulled the shirttails loose from his trousers. Still he watched her, intent, utterly focused. She felt her nipples tighten, wanted him to touch, wanted to touch him.

No reason why not to, she had to remind herself, even now, even here. He wasn't going to pull back or bail out. He wasn't going to pretend this hadn't happened, tell her she'd got the medication mixed up and given him something that had worn off, tell her that he hadn't been in control of himself.

He wasn't going to, but . . . oh god, he could.

His hands on her stilled and Rose tensed further, held onto the sides of his shirt tighter, held onto it instead of to him. "Rose?" he asked, voice husky. "Are you-"

She never let him finish that question, never allowed it to end one way or another. Swallowing up his words, she kissed him, invaded his mouth and attacked his control, urging restraint to snap. At first engaged in a one-sided argument, Rose groped his bum, squeezing and cupping, pulling him to her. The noise the Doctor made was untranslatable and perfectly clear, his hand slipping under her top. Gasping, she arched away from his shockingly cool palm, arched into him, against. Reclaiming her mouth, he turned them around, pulled her forward, stepped backward. His hands slipped to her sides, tugged lightly on the belt loops of her jeans yet held her at a distance.

Gazing up at her, the Doctor sat down on the bed. His fingers toyed with the hem of her top, his dark eyes watching her face. Rose nodded, couldn't stop nodding. Concentration evident on his face, he pulled up her top, a slow drag of cloth up her torso, a careful replication of what she had started with his shirt. She lifted her arms and he divested her of it completely, the cool air hitting her still warmer than his body.

Nervous for far too many reasons, Rose started to shield herself despite still being covered, stopped as he caught her hands, his thumbs stroking her palms as he looked. Taking the next step, he released her hands, reached around her back for the clasp of her bra as she reached for that line of still mostly done buttons. He paused, swallowed, allowed her to do as she liked, play as she liked. Choosing to leave the tie on, at least for a little while longer, she loosened it instead, slipped the collar out from under it. She brushed her knuckles against the soft hair of his chest, leaned down to kiss him when his watching grew too intent, too much like a scientist cataloging the behavior of an unknown specimen. Cool fingers danced along her back, locating her bra clasp and fumbling there in an immensely endearing moment. His arms raised and in the way, she couldn't push his shirt off of his shoulders, off of him. She settled instead for touching without looking, a compromise that was far more than fair. He leaned back, pulled her with him. Catching herself with a knee on the mattress and both hands on his shoulders, Rose found herself nearly crawling on top of him.

He hummed into her mouth in something that might have been victory as the catch came undone. His tongue stroking hers, he slid the straps over her shoulders and let gravity to its work, baring her without watching. The discarded garment fell on his chest when she lifted her arms to take it fully off, and he tossed it off to the side, almost uninterested in her bare breasts. While this would have to be remedied, and soon, there was a more pressing issue at hand. With his back against the bed, there was no way of removing his open shirt without a struggle and he wasn't helping, his interest in taking off his own clothes second in his interest in taking off hers.

His fingers played with the waist of her jeans, tugged her down to him ineffectually. Kneeling over him, she had a position strong enough to resist and resist she did, grinning as a frustrated whine escaped the man under her. Straining, he lifted his head to kiss her and pouted at her continued refusal. Her grin grew wider as she shifted her weight, as she lifted a hand to take the length of his tie, that pout disappearing as quickly as it had come. She'd wanted to play with this forever; by the look on his face, she wasn't alone in that desire. Rose lowered herself to sit on the Doctor's thighs, steadying herself and fondling him at the same time, basking in his rapt attention.

Hand-over-deliberate-hand, she reeled him in and up. He came to her willingly, propping himself up on his elbows. Finally able to push his shirt down and off of his shoulders, she attacked his mouth and called a strategic retreat, pulling back a little and a little and a little, drawing him up with her until she could feel the strain of his arms through his shoulders, his chest. A tug at the offending garment got the point through to him and he shook it down his arms using his entire upper body, the movement bouncing her on his legs and surprising a laugh from her lips. He laughed with her, the throaty chuckle turning into a shuddering moan as she readjusted her position, shimmied fully onto his lap. The sound sent a throb through her, stroked the coiled heat inside of her while winding it tighter.

He was pushing up into her through his trousers, the tiny, jerking motions of his hips hinting at a want he couldn't fully restrain. In a surge of lust and daring, she cupped him through the cloth, felt his shape, his size. Almost helplessly vocal, he cried out, some lovely sound escaping him with each movement of her hand. He clutched at her, gripped her shoulder and upper arm and seemed to forget how to let go. She kept at it, a rush unlike anything else she'd ever felt consuming her. Each hitched breath, each strained groan, each needy whimper; they were all for her. And with this new, untested body of his, they were _only_ for her.

Feeling him, she thought he'd fit. They'd fit. No reason why they couldn't. Because they could, because they were going to do this. It was going to happen. And dragging her fingers across his contained length, taking her time in getting to his zipper, she finally made that control slip. A repeated syllable falling from his lips, he bucked into her, nearly throwing her from her perch. She held on, fell against him, onto him. They collapsed onto the bed, each half off of it.

Yelping, Rose scrambled off of him, stood on legs unfit to hold her up. His chest wasn't much warmer than his hands. Faced by the suddenly very real possibility of cold alien bits, Rose understood the Doctor's involuntary noises. She wanted so much more – she wanted so much more _right now_. Whatever the temperature, she could handle it, adjust.

"Rose?" the Doctor asked plaintively. Looking as dazed as he sounded, he propped himself up on one arm and reached for her with the other. "Rose, what are you . . . ?"

"You're not naked," she informed him, letting his hand on her hip draw her closer. She reached for his tie once more and he lowered her head, allowing her to remove the still tied loop from around his neck.

"Is that so?" He kept the smile off of his face, but he couldn't keep it out of his voice. "How very rude of me."

"Mmhm," Rose agreed, trailing a fingertip along his fly. His hand left her hip to catch her hand, a swift motion that made her start in surprise.

"You," he said, eyeing her very deliberately, "are also being quite rude."

She bit her lip, suddenly shy. "We match," she said by way of explanation.

A thought striking him, the Doctor sat up and yanked off his trainers. Dropping his socks on top of his discarded footwear, he gave her a speculative look. "No we don't," he contradicted.

Suddenly biting back a smile, Rose sat down next to him and took off her socks and trainers as well. "Yes we do."

About to undo his fly, he paused, watching her, his dark eyes suddenly unfathomable. He leaned in to kiss her, a cool hand cupping her breast. Breath shuddering in a near shiver, she let him take control of the kiss, couldn't help but let him. There was a desperation beneath his tenderness, the Doctor holding her gently while refusing utterly to let go.

Once she'd run out of air, he pulled back slowly and stood, hands hesitating at his waist. He stood with his back to her, tension never clearer in his shoulders. Looking over his shoulder at her, he seemed unable to meet her eyes.

She thought she understood. "Lights to low," Rose told the ceiling.

He relaxed, but not enough. He stayed as he was, stuck, frightened of frightening her.

Rose thought her heart might break from loving him.

"Come here," she said softly, reaching out her hand for his.

He turned, took it. She watched his face, beautiful in shadow yet made strange by it as well. Two steps brought him to her, standing between her legs. Leaning forward, she pressed kisses to the unfamiliar musculature of his chest, stroked her hands over a ribcage that didn't quite feel like a human's. A shuddering sigh escaped him, his fingers playing through her hair. She murmured one word against his cool skin, one word, another. "Please. Doctor."

"Rose, cross-species, it- it's always-"

"Don't care," she told him, pulling back to look up. Her body so close to his, she stood, meeting his dark gaze. "S'long as it's you an' me, I really don't care."

He gaped at her wordlessly, stared at her in a way that made her stomach lurch. She was just as alien to him as he was to her. And he didn't understand.

Or, she amended as he ducked his head to kiss her, maybe he did. Cupping his face in her hands, she tried to convince him even as she tried to come to terms with what he'd shown her in a rare moment of nakedness that had nothing to do with nudity. The Doctor, insecure; it didn't make sense. He couldn't be that oblivious, couldn't have missed how she felt. Maybe that's what he'd meant about not fitting, about the cross-species issue. Part of what he'd meant.

She heard a rustle of cloth, heard something fall, gasped into his mouth as she realized what it was. Stroking his side, her hand found the skin of his hip, felt the bone beneath as he shifted, lifting his feet out from his trousers. He tore his mouth from hers and buried his face in her neck as she touched him, a gentle, hesitant brush of the fingers that left him groaning, his grip on her not hesitant at all. She held him the second time, wrapped her hand around him and found him warm enough.

Sighing in something close to relief, she kissed and nibbled at the unbitten side of his neck, rubbing her thumb along his length. Silk soft and smooth and then – not. She rubbed her thumb up: smooth. And down: not. She tried to put a name to the texture, to the sensation under her hand. Not fuzzy but somehow like velvet, like rubbing the fabric in the wrong direction. Like little, tiny bits of skin trying to catch and hold on, only to stroke her palm instead, leaving her hand with a not unpleasant slightly slick, slightly sticking feeling.

Trying to get a full understanding, she let her hand wander, explored with a light touch that had him pressing into her, that had him babbling into her shoulder between licking and sucking. Surprised, Rose pressed back and fought down the inappropriate urge to giggle. Later, not now, but definitely later, she would tease him mercilessly about literally having no balls. Right now, she was a little too busy imagining what the Doctor's – not penis, not cock, maybe phallus – what his member would feel like inside of her. Thrust in, friction out.

It was Rose's turn to whimper, the sound pulled out of her as she pressed her thighs together, needing something more between them. This was going to be amazing. Fantastic. Brilliant.

Her eager fingers worked at her own fly. Rose shimmied, working her jeans down and he held her by the waist, fingertips tapping lightly on flesh still covered by her knickers.

"These," he said into her ear, bravado back in his voice, "will have to go."

"Then take 'em off of me," she answered, trying for sultry and maybe managing it as she kicked her jeans aside.

"Your wish is my command," he replied, an echo of so long ago. "Just be careful what you wish for." He kissed a trail down her chest as he lowered himself to his knees before her, pausing at each breast. His questing tongue laving her, he hooked his fingers into the waistband of her knickers and pulled, the damp cloth sliding down her thighs. His hair brushing against her stomach proved to be a tickling distraction, Rose giggling uncontrollably right up until the circling pattern of his mouth arrived at her navel, the Doctor's tongue tasting and sampling until Rose's hands on his shoulders were all that kept her upright. Cool fingers traced up the inside of her thigh and she unconsciously spread her legs wider.

The Doctor spoke to her, babbled out a string of words that were part surprise, part wonder and all thrilled curiosity. "You've got _curls_ down here, Rose, you- Oh. _Ohhh_, you- you're . . . wet and burning and- and, oh. Rose."

Even braced for the chill, Rose nearly yelped at the intimate touch, the duel anticipation twining within her suddenly snapping and breaking apart as reality arrived. Not as good as she'd hoped, not as horrible as she'd feared.

"Rose, am I-"

"More," she breathed, needing him deeper, hotter, thicker. "Like- yeah."

A second finger joined the first, filling and jarring and warming quickly in her heat. She gasped at the cool intrusion, gripped his hair too tightly. Instead of voicing protest, he simply nuzzled her belly, humming in unsatisfied contentment. What must she feel like for him, her body burning against his? A note of worry crossed her mind and then the Doctor's hand twisted inside of her.

Her legs buckled completely, sending her to her knees, driving his hand deeper in until he caught her with his other arm, brought her to him and slipped his fingers out. Distantly aware of having cried out at the pressure and again at the loss of it, Rose shivered, pressed against the Doctor's side. Cold, but not that bad, nowhere near enough to stop her from pressing closer. She felt that edge slipping away from her, the orgasm of the Oncoming Shag falling back to be entirely out of reach.

She'd never felt so empty, inner walls clenching around nothing.

His voice was smug as he murmured into her ear. "I'm going to make a guess and assume I did that right."

Before she could knock that smile off of his face, he looked at his hand with interest, studied the wet sheen on his fingers. A thoughtful expression across his features, he licked one fingertip experimentally. He considered.

He sucked on one digit, on the other, laving the first knuckles. Humming once more, he pulled his fingers from his mouth with a wet smack before licking the digits clean, sliding his tongue between the two fingers, searching for every last taste.

Leaning against him, Rose watched, barely breathing. Seeming to realize that he'd been ignoring her, the Doctor blinked and looked down at her. "Sorry, that was rude," he decided, wiping his hand off on her carpet. "Where were we?"

"I was about to shag you," she told him, taking him in her hand. There was no question in her mind, no wondering or hesitation. Exploration could wait. She wanted him _now_. Hard, fast, and _now_.

His eyes tried to widen and fall shut at the same time, his immensely vocal body becoming immensely vocal. "Yes that's – Yes," he managed. "Let's do that."

They stood together, hand finding hand, each unwilling to relinquish contact. Leaving the carpet for the duvet, they fell into an embrace, bounced lightly, pressing and grinding together. Half on top of her, the Doctor rolled off, looking at her significantly with his back to the mattress.

__

"And then you'll straddle me?"

Raising herself to all fours, Rose watched his face as she prowled closer, as she planted a hand on the other side of his head. Trying to get the angle right, she eased back, slung a leg over him. She could feel his gaze on her face as his hands stroked her, caressed her.

Dipping her hand between their bodies, she eased herself down, guided him inside of her.

She breathed out a word, a pair of syllables that might have been a prayer or a curse or just his name. Ready for him, there was only the slightest resistance before he entered her fully. A keening cry escaped her. They'd done it. They'd made it this far. They'd made it, and it was fantastic.

He whimpered, hips rocking instead of thrusting up, allowing her to adjust to his size. His hands gripped her hips, her bum, grinding her against him. As soon as her breathing was almost under control, Rose clenched down, tightened around him and squeezed the rest of him with her thighs. His head thrown back, pressed into the duvet, he moaned and babbled at once, words stretching out into meaningless sounds punctuated by gasps and sighs and her name.

Now regretting the removal of his tie, Rose tugged on his arm, shifted her weight. After verbal prompting, he sat up, abdominal muscles flexing beneath her hand. He was so wiry, her Doctor. So lean and spare and – best of all – naked. Naked and fondling and a very good kisser, persistent and playful with his tongue.

Her breasts brushed against his chest as she circled her hips in a repeating figure-eight and he broke the kiss to hold her flush against him. Rose gasped and clutched at him, her nipples tightening and begging for his mouth. His angle inside of her had shifted as he moved, shifted again with their bodies pressed together and oh. _Oh_. Doctor.

Hands on his shoulders, thighs shaking from the effort, she raised herself up, moaning as the Doctor's second texture came into play. Delicious friction all inside of her, she pulled up until she'd nearly lost the feel of him inside. He yelped and slammed her back down with his hands on her hips, one swift motion burying him to the hilt.

Her body crying out for _againagainagainagain_, she tried to repeat the motion only to have him pull her back down, hitting hard and deep inside of her. One arm tight around her waist, the other looped under her arm to grip her shoulder, he held her securely, restrained her movements, panting.

"Don't," he gasped into her neck, tightening his arms around her, crushing her to him, his chill almost burned away by her heat. His hearts seemed to shake against her breasts, vibrating instead of pounding. "Stay."

"Stayin'. Right here. Not leavin'," she struggled to say, struggled to resume her efforts. "Never gonna leave you."

He flared inside of her. There was no other word for it, those tiny layers of skin of his phallus fluttering against her sensitized flesh. Rose cried out, hands scrambling at his back for purchase, the Doctor holding her down and preventing her from pulling away from the sudden sensation. Instinct protested, tried to take flight away from the strange and unnatural intrusion. He rocked up into her and instinct promptly forgot what it was going on about.

It was like- it was like- She had no idea what it was like, only that she wanted more of it. Repeatedly.

He was saying something, babbling into her ear with words she didn't, couldn't understand. As she rolled her hips, his voice hit a sudden high note, a squeak followed by a low groan that rumbled through her. Every gyration of her hips, every clench around him drew out gasps and moans from each of them. His grip loosened, hands wandering instead of clutching. Grinding good, thrusting bad, she quickly concluded.

Rose peppered the side of his face with kisses, kept at it insistently until he turned his head, pressed his lips to hers and returned his tongue to its rightful place inside of her mouth. Guiding his hands down to her bum, she leaned back, making needy noises at the change of angle, her eyelids fluttering as he brushed against her right _there_, all filling friction, all hers.

Neck straining, the Doctor whimpered as the kiss broke, Rose leaning back too far for him to get at her mouth. One hand falling behind her for support, the other buried in his hair, she brought his attention to what was well within his reach. Always the fast learner, his mouth closed around her nipple, tongue teasing, roaming, lapping up sweat.

Rose was the one babbling now, the one crying out and shaking and straining and oh god please, just a little more, just a little more and then, then, just a little more, right there, find it, oh god Doctor please-

She touched herself and his hand followed, cool fingers taking over, pressing and rubbing against her clit as she shook and shattered and that was his name she was yelling, crying, shouting, again and again as he stroked and pressed and touched that sensitive bundle of nerves. Pulling her up, he tore his mouth from her breast to reclaim her lips, hard and possessive, swallowing her muffled cries and shuddering inside of her as she climaxed, inner walls clenching uncontrollably around him. His breath catching, the Doctor tensed, muscles taut.

Hot, oily fluid spilt inside of her and the Doctor sighed, body going slack, his forehead pressed against hers, their breaths mingling. Ghosting her fingertips up his back, Rose watched his face in the near dark, his freckles barely visible, his eyes shut as he breathed, spent.

Her Doctor.

She kissed him, a languorous play of mouths and tongues, felt the soft smile at the corners of his lips. Humming contentedly, he laid back, pulling her down on top of him, truly horizontal for the first time. He slipped out of her, his slick seed negating the expected friction and Rose sighed with the loss. Raising his hand to her face, he stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb, a small motion she nuzzled into. He opened his eyes, looked into hers.

"Hello," he said, smiling.

"Hi," she answered, liking very much the picture he made beneath her, hair tussled, eyes dark and shining, mouth well-kissed. He should look like this more often. As often as possible.

He rolled them over and she squeaked, clutching to him before bursting into a giggling fit, sudden and unexpected. She shook with it, euphoric and confusing him utterly. Hooking her leg around his, she wrapped her arms around his neck, bringing his smile back out. She raised her head to kiss his dimple before relaxing back onto the duvet.

"Happy?" he asked, still propping himself up on his elbows, as if he honestly needed to check.

"Does giddy count?" she murmured, pulling him down on top of her before he could cool off. No thrusting and a limited cuddling period aside, she couldn't be happier.

Snuggling into her, he made a considering sound, nuzzling the side of her neck. "Oh, it's certainly passable."

Rose giggled again. "Only passable, Mr. Smith? Think I might need that refresher course after all."

"Oh, I think you've gone beyond needing a simple refresher course, Miss Tyler. In fact," he mused, one second away from snickering madly, "I'd say you're in need of a private tutor."

"And night classes," she added.

"And night classes," he agreed, kissing her shoulder.

Petting his hair, savoring his firm weight, even appreciating – for now – the wet evidence of his pleasure inside of her, Rose wondered if it was possible to die of happiness, to simply become too full and overflow, love and joy bursting the heart they spilled out of. She pressed her head against his, a pressure he returned. "We'll just have to work on that, won't we?"

"Mm, quite," he answered, his grin audible. "Your dedication to your studies is very impressive, if I may say so."

She didn't correct him, didn't shake her head and say, "Dedication to _you_." Too soon for that, their shared intimacy too new. Instead she played with his hair and allowed with a smile, "You may." He chuckled, the vibrations rumbling down into her, and she relaxed until his blanketed weight, content to hold him for however long he would allow.

They stayed like that for quite a while.

.-.-.-.-.-.

Craning his head for a better look at his neck, the Doctor studied himself in the bathroom mirror, wiping the steam off of it. Turning his head the other way, he watched his own eyebrow rise before glancing back to the subject of his inspection. Subjects, actually. Plural.

A _kakothrips cogitatio _bite on one side, a hickey on the other; definitely his day of being bitten, today. He snickered to himself a little, feeling unreasonably smug – even for a Time Lord. That had been a disaster well averted.

Very well averted, actually.

He turned as the shower curtain pulled back, positively smirked as Rose climbed out of her second shower of the day. She grinned shyly at him and committed the grave, grave mistake of covering herself up with her towel. To be fair, he'd already made the even worse mistake of getting dressed.

"Something funny?" she asked as little trails of water dripped down her thighs to pool around her feet.

What? Oh, right, snickering to himself. "Nothing," he replied, quite the obvious liar.

Rose shook her head at him, clearly not believing him and yet letting him get away with it. "So," she said, running her fingers through her damp hair and taking a few steps towards him to poke at the mark she hadn't made. "Definitely past the six hour mark by now."

He lifted his hand, toyed with the damp, fluffy cloth of her towel, played with it where she'd tucked it into itself. Her lips parted and he abruptly felt like something edible. Which sounded like a remarkably fun idea, now that it had occurred to him. Though, hm, Rose certainly _smelled_ edible, all . . . Rose-like. Rose-y. Rose-ish. Soap and fruit-scented shampoo. Droplets of water trailed down her neck and disappeared between her breasts.

"What're you thinkin' about?" she asked, grinning like the minx she was, clearly knowing the answer already.

He showed her anyway.


End file.
